Canyon of the Long Shadows

by Carl Dane

  Right now, that suited me fine.

  I pointed my revolver at Judge Gates Davis and motioned for him to come to the front of the cell. He did, stepping on Droopy in the process.

  I grabbed him by the hair, not to hurt but to control, and put the gun against his forehead and told him what to do. I told the ones who were conscious and the one I suspected of playing possum that if I heard anything else shouted, anything other than what I wanted, I’d turn and empty my gun into the cell and smear everybody’s brains on the bars.

  I nodded and Weed blew out the lantern.

  We waited a long minute so our eyes could adjust. Then Weed moved to the side of the door before he opened it, or at least I assume that’s what he did because that’s what I’d told him to do. The office was totally dark, an abyss devoid of any hint of light.

  When the door opened, the dim glow from outside actually was a sharp contrast. I could see a wedge of light on the floor.

  “Now,” I whispered to Davis, making sure he could feel the barrel against his head.

  He bellowed.

  “Tremaine. I’m coming out first. Don’t shoot. He’s got a gun in my back.”

  It was loud and clear. Just for the sake of convenience, so Davis couldn’t sabotage my plan, I holstered my gun and punched him in the jaw and he was out before he fell.

  The blanket was a dark brown, and I’d draped a corner of it over my head on the theory that in near-darkness it would resemble a mop of long hair. I unearthed my last remaining spare hat, a ratty thing shoved in a file drawer, and shoved it low on my head. The white Daniel Webster sash and white vest under the cutaway coat seemed almost to glow in the faint moonlight coming in the door when I looked down and smoothed them out before I walked out.

  Weed, wearing my slightly less ratty hat, which was a few sizes too big and came dangerously close to covering his eyes, was behind me with the rifle.

  I told him to walk tall, but he still looked five-six no matter how much he stretched.

  And whether I looked like I’d gained fifty pounds by stuffing a blanket under the Daniel Webster getup was to be determined in the next few seconds.

  It occurred to me that I might not be able to pull this one off.

  Chapter 55

  Weed stopped when I did.

  My hands were held high. There was a Cooper Pocket revolver stuffed in my left sleeve, my Colt on my hip, another revolver in my waistband, and as much ammunition as I could carry in belts slung around my waist.

  Weed broke to his left, and the little fucker wasn’t kidding about running like a deer. He was almost to the corner before the men in the shadows could react.

  I heard a double pat, the type of sound you’d make by roughly tapping someone on the shoulder. I guessed it was coming from the barber shop across the street, where the door was set back in an alcove. It was all inky black and I could see only the outline of the building and the faint glint from the metal awning.

  So I plucked the Cooper out of my sleeve and unloaded all five shots from where I thought the sound had come. While I was firing with my right hand, I pulled the Colt from my waistband with my left and opened up with six more. I kept moving as I fired.

  I heard a yelp and a curse, and then quick footsteps.

  “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t run away from him,” said a disembodied voice, high and tight and angry and wheezy, and moving to my left.

  I fired in the general direction of the voice but shooting by ear at a moving target isn’t easy; I’d fired a fusillade when they were sitting still and only managed, from what I could guess, to wing one of them.

  And then I heard the thudding of more boots on the boardwalk and thought I saw the outline of that mountain-lion apparition scurry to my left.

  I fired a couple more times, just for the hell of it, and ran to my right, toward the Silver Spoon. That’s where I needed to go, anyway.

  Chapter 56

  I reloaded as I ran and pulled out that stupid blanket before it unraveled by itself and tripped me. I’d ditch the cutaway coat as soon as I could because the tail flopped over my holster.

  The front doors were locked. The Spoon was equipped with batwings, but like most places that weren’t open twenty-four hours a day, the bar had a second set of real doors mounted behind the batwings.

  I didn’t have a key and didn’t have any time to fool around so I kicked in one of the small windows and climbed through it, stepping high so as to avoid a jagged castration.

  Elmira wasn’t in her room. I went down the hall to her daughter’s room. Her daughter, Cassie, didn’t live there anymore and the room was now used for clients. I didn’t recognize the man in the bed, who mumbled drunkenly and rolled over, but I saw long red hair in the moonlight and recognized it as belonging to a dove named Cecelia.

  I shook her awake and she lit a candle.

  “Hawke,” she said, blinking and scowling, “why are you dressed like Daniel Webster?”

  “No time for that. Elmira’s not in her room.”

  “A course she ain’t in her room,” Cecelia said, in a tone that implied she wanted to end the sentence with stupid. “She headed out for the Apache camp before closing. Didn’t she tell you?”

  I turned and left. As I clumped down the stairs I heard some more drunken mumbling and Cecelia say, soothingly, that it was just the dumb marshal.

  ***

  The blacksmith shop was unlocked. I lit a match and found Richard Oak trussed and gagged, lying against the brick hearth.

  They’d worked him over pretty good, but he was still alive. I’d left him in charge, and while he was a good man when it came to lifting anvils and the like, this wasn’t his type of game.

  Tremaine and company had wanted to know what he knew – which was nothing more than I’d left town with, some vague instructions about being in charge – and would have killed him except they planned to come back and try for more later.

  I removed the gag. His breathing was deep and regular, but I couldn’t bring him to. I decided to cut his ropes and let him rest, but didn’t have my knife because one of the goons had liberated it from me while I was unconscious. I lit another match and worked myself into a boil of frustration trying to find something to cut with.

  The man had every tool in the world in that shop except something that would cut a rope. Tongs and hammers and picks and shovels and straps and pointy things but not one fucking knife.

  I lamented that it would take me forever to untie the knots, and if I waited I wouldn’t get to…

  And then it occurred to me that there was nowhere to go.

  Elmira had headed to the Apache camp. In the daytime you could make it in an hour. She was a reasonably competent rider and with the partial moonlight and clear skies I reckoned she could still keep to the trail and make it there in 90 minutes or so. She’d be back with Taza and some cooperative braves by dawn.

  Weed was either dead or on the trail to Austin. I had no idea if he was a good rider, but he did manage to make it here on horseback; to hear him talk, if the horse took lame he could run it himself.

  Would he really summon Munro and Harbold if he made it? I was betting yes. The man had been duped and was angry and wanted to save his reputation.

  It would probably also take him another ninety minutes to get to Austin. I had no idea how long it would take him to find one or both addresses, but he lived there and had nodded when I handed him the paper. It didn’t occur to me to ask whether he recognized the streets or was just giving the same reflexive nod he used to acknowledge that he did not see a back door.

  But finding an address wasn’t such a difficult job. I’d heard there was a new zoo in Austin and I would imagine that if Weed couldn’t find a street address he could recruit a gibbon or lemur who could.

  If he did manage to locate them, Munro and Harbold would ricochet back here, probably on those magnificent cavalry horses that Munro somehow had extorted from the Army. I figured on a dawn arrival for them, too.


  The Canyon Creatures, as Weed called them, were a total wild card. But if Davis had indeed summoned them yesterday afternoon, and if they came, the likely plan of attack would be to use the daylight to travel, camp overnight, and ride in at dawn.

  A lot would be happening at dawn, which as far as I could calculate with precision – a task hampered by the fact that one of those assholes stole my watch – would be sometime in the next few hours.

  I locked the door to the shop. It was heavy and solid and cumbersome, like everything else in the place, including the owner. I propped Oak up and began to work on the knots.

  There was no window, so I wouldn’t see the sunlight when it came, but in combat you learn how to take short naps. I decided to get up after a couple hours of sleep and then crack the door open and check.

  Chapter 57

  The sky was bleeding crimson on the horizon and a few flat clouds were illuminated in the inky sky when I decided to leave.

  Oak was conscious but creaky, and badly in need of water, and I planned to get a cup from the rain barrel on the side of the building but I froze and drew my revolver when I heard the footsteps crunching and popping on the strip of gravel that led to the entrance.

  “Don’t shoot,” came Carmody’s voice, “I already got so many holes in me I don’t need to pee no more. I just leak when I walk.”

  I was tempted to fling open the door but a suspicion in the reptile vestiges of my mind held me back.

  “It’s really us,” Miller said, “and nobody’s got us at gunpoint. Now please open the fucking door.”

  It took longer than they liked to do that because it’s my habit to open doors with an outstretched arm while standing to the side. This door was like something on a bank vault and it was a slow process.

  Carmody pushed past me, making sure not to brush the arm that lolled in a sling fashioned from two bandanas. He was followed by Miller, who tugged on the door, gave a double-take, and grunted while he slowly pulled it shut.

  “How’d you find me?” I asked.

  “Nice to see you, too,” Carmody said. “A blind mule walking backwards could have tracked you. Who else would have broken a window at the Spoon and left footprints going in and coming out, and then tracked through wet ground to the door here? It rained maybe twelve or eighteen hours ago but the ground’s still damp enough to hold a print. And who would have made tracks with heels that are all worn down on the inside edges, which is a sign of the mighty peculiar way you walk?”

  He narrowed his eyes and turned his head sideways a bit.

  “And why is you dressed like Daniel Webster?”

  Miller interrupted.

  “We need to plan. There’s about to be a battle bigger than Gettysburg.”

  I asked him what he was talking about, and he filled me in while Carmody silently slid out the door and came back with water for Oak. He’d appraised what happened without asking and moved quickly. In times when he sees that something needs to be done, Carmody is not one to waste words. He takes care of that process, in a big way, when we’re waiting for something to happen and then when the smoke clears.

  It was dark in the shop with the door shut but enough harsh light slanted in under the door so Carmody could find a lantern, which I’d been unable to locate the night before.

  Miller found some brown wrapping paper on the floor and a pencil on Oak’s workbench, right next to, of course, a foot-long knife.

  He sketched out the lay of the land in precise circles and arrows and helpfully labelled each party, including “US” in clear block capital letters.

  To the west of us were eleven criminal types, he explained, riding in as we spoke.

  “They’re probably here by now,” Miller said, crossing out one circle and drawing a new one.

  I told him I got the idea and urged him to continue a little more quickly.

  To the east were Munro, Harbold, Weed, and four Apaches.

  “And,” Miller concluded, tapping the point of the pencil on the greasy brown paper, “this is us.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You’ve been busy.”

  “Carmody doesn’t like to waste daylight,” Miller explained.

  “Do my best sneaking around in those minutes before the sun comes up,” Carmody said.

  “One other thing,” Miller said. “When Carmody was scouting on the road to the west I saw somebody in the center of town. Just standing there, kind of unusual for this time of the morning. I didn’t recognize him, and wasn’t close enough to see much anyway, but he looked like he was waiting for somebody.”

  “I’m sure he is,” I said, and opened the door to a flood of brilliant sunshine.

  Chapter 58

  I walked into town while Carmody and Miller rode their extorted horses next to me. I had no idea where my fancy cavalry horse had gone to, other than it had certainly been stolen by now, probably by one of the dopes currently stacked like cordwood in my cell.

  I’d taken a drink from the rain barrel and Carmody had given me some jerky, and aside from the dull throbbing where the gun-barrel had been laid across my head I felt pretty good. I’d shed the cutaway coat, vest, and sash, and now had a clean reach to my revolver. I also now stood a chance of being taken seriously.

  It looked like I was the catalyst in what was about to follow. I could see riders at one end of Front Street and could see the big Morgans on the other. They began to converge.

  When I was new to combat what surprised me most was the businesslike way some confrontations unfolded. I suppose I had expected a frenzied dash to the vortex of battle when combatants first saw each other, and while that sometimes happens it’s not the way things usually worked.

  Instead, we’d more often than not take up positions in full view of the enemy, sometimes exchanging words and maybe even a pleasantry. On more than one occasion, early in the war, spectators had positioned themselves on the sidelines. Once I saw a man and a woman spread a blanket for a picnic lunch.

  And that’s how things were unfolding here. I stopped about fifty feet from Tremaine and we circled each other so that I was on Munro’s side and Tremaine was grouped among the riders. A couple of them actually sported what looked like sunburns. One, a stocky fellow with a white beard and a mouth that seemed to move constantly, held his left arm cradled in his right, and there was a circle of drying blood on his shoulder.

  He let go of his left arm, rested it on the pommel, and with his right hand pointed to Tremaine and then turned his head to talk to the others. I could see the jut of the whiskers that stuck out from his lower lip moving with machine-like regularity. I couldn’t make out what he was saying but it was the same creaky, wheezy voice I’d heard in the dark.

  Tremaine glared at him.

  We were all assembled. As if on cue, Munro pranced his horse forward and one of the outlaws did the same, although his horse did not step as lively and the man’s eyes did not mimic Munro’s zeal for the pending carnage.

  Munro was smiling. And then I noticed Lydia. She’d come with him, and seeing as how they both would have had to have awakened in the middle of the night to get here by dawn, I suppose that explained why Munro seemed in such a good mood. A night of revelry with the second-scariest person in the world and the prospect of a bloodbath in the morning were unquestionably his idea of paradise.

  Then Tremaine held up a hand and everybody stopped moving, talking, and breathing.

  “I’ve got something to say,” Tremaine said. His voice was a powerful baritone and he spoke oddly, given the circumstances, in the formal tones of a stage actor trying to reach the second balcony.

  “I’ve heard some talk amongst some of you, and I know there will be more, so I want to set everybody straight before we commence to settling scores.”

  He turned toward the dozen or so men sporting sunburns and at least one bullet hole. It was the first time I’d been able to study him close-up. He was younger than I first took him for. The dark walrus mustache put some age on him, but his skin
was unlined, and his face still carried some of the firm roundness of youth. His hair was cut short at the sides and his neck was thick and connected with no discernible border to broad, sloping shoulders. I pegged him at not more than thirty.

  “Last night, Hawke here hid behind the man that hired me to restore some order here. I ain’t blaming Hawke for that. It was a smart move and if I was about to swap bullets with somebody like me and there was a guy fat as an elephant nearby I’d hide behind him too.”

  Tremaine shifted his focus to me but still spoke to the balcony.

  “I had no choice but to go out the door because Hawke could shoot at me and I couldn’t shoot at him, and if there was gunplay, the man I was hired to protect would have been hit.”

  I could see where this was going.

  “At some point,” Tremaine said, “Hawke is going to brag that I ran away from him. I hear he likes to get his name in the paper. And I hear he’s got a loudmouth deputy who likes to spread stories at the bar.”

  “Go fuck yourself, asshole,” Carmody said.

  “And that pencil-neck phony judge switched sides, and I’m sure he’s going to be talking big, too.”

  “Go…go fuck yourself,” Weed said, tentatively.

  Weed straightened up in the saddle and looked around him, gauging the reaction.

  “Yes,” he piped, “go fuck yourself, asshole.”

  Tremaine ignored him and squared up toward me. He shook his arms and rolled his shoulders to loosen them up.

  “I read that newspaper story about you being ‘the man with the lightning draw.’ Guess you think you’re a pretty big man around here.”

  “Big war hero, too,” Taza said. “But be careful because he kick in knee like little girl.”

  I decided I would ignore that. For the time being, anyway. First of all, I’d kicked him in the thigh, not the knee. Next time – if there was a next time – I’d aim a few inches higher and plant one where he’d really remember it.